But the branch [of the art of wealthgetting, tékhnê khrêmatistiké] connected with exchange [metablêtiké] is justly discredited [psegoménê, "blamed," "censured"] (for it is not in accordance with nature [ou katà phýsin], but involves men's taking things from one another). As this is so, usury [obolostatiké, "obol weighing"] is most reasonably hated, because its gain comes from money [nómisma] itself and not from that for the sake of which money was invented. For money was brought into existence for the purpose of exchange, but interest [tókos] increases the amount of the money itself (and this is the actual origin of the Greek word: offspring resembles parent, and interest is money born of money); consequently this form of the business of getting wealth [khrêmatismós] is of all forms the most contrary to nature.

Since only actions aimed at perceived benefit to others were, to Aristotle's mind, morally approved, actions solely for personal gain must be bad. That commercial considerations may not have affected the daily activities of most people does not mean however that over any prolonged period their very lives did not depend on the functioning of a trade that enabled them to buy essentials. That production for gain which Aristotle denounced as unnatural had -- long before his time -- already become the foundation of an extended order far transcending the known needs of other persons.

A curious feature of Greek influence on Christianity is the moral condemnation of trade and finance. This does not originate in Judaism, where (as in Islam) money and trade have always been legitimate, nor in primitive Christianity, which grew up as an urban religion among what was actually a prosperous middle class. Instead, the whole moral discourse of suspicion and condemnation of trade and money derives from Greek philosophy. While it may be assumed that the later Christian attitude went along with its world-denying and monastic tradition, we see a lot less of that in the East, in Constantinople, where a cash economy continued through the Middle Ages and the life of the City was much consumed with trade, while monasticism, of course, was taken no less seriously than in the West. Instead, the Latin West, under the influence of the former Neoplatonist, Augustine, and where the cash economy collapsed into subsistence agriculture, became the venue of suspicion of merchants, money, and cities, especially when these came to be associated with the Jewish merchants who, welcomed or not, nevertheless were able to travel and function in Christian areas where, for instance, Muslims were never allowed. After a modern economy developed in the West, money, buying, and selling, when these were regarded as bad things, continued to be associated with the Jews, as we see from the Enlightenment (e.g. Kant and Fries) to Marx to the socialist left of the present. The vitriol and violence directed against the Jews, however, finds no counterpart in the regard of defenders of Capitalism for the Greek philosophers, particularly Plato and Aristotle, who did so much to delegitimize merchants and bankers. When even Jefferson still valorized rural life and distrusted bankers and "stock-jobbers," and the modern left constantly seeks to shift the blame for the failures and irrationality of government over to bankers, brokers, and corporations, while American universities have become hotbeds of Marxism and anti-Semitism, the terms of the debate have really changed very little.

Enklinobarangus ()

If craftsmen and blacksmiths were feared for transforming material substance, if traders were feared for transforming such intangible qualities as value, how much more will the banker be feared for the transformations he effects with the most abstract and immaterial of all economic institutions? Thus we reach the climax of the progressive replacement of the perceivable and concrete by abstract concepts shaping rules guiding activity: money and its institutions seem to be beyond the boundary of laudable and understandable physical efforts of creation, in a realm where the comprehension of the concrete ceases and incomprehensible abstractions rule.

Thus the subject at once bewilders specialists and offends moralists...

F.A. Hayek (ibid., p.102)

No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were... Any mans death diminishes me because I am involved in Mankinde. And therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.

John Donne (1572-1631)

The long quote from Aristotle above nicely combines moral condemnations of trade and of moneylending with interest, with reasons against each. This provides an excellent starting point for a consideration of the manner in which worthy economic acitivites and institutions would be morally condemned over history.

Not everyone, or even Aristotle, condemned trade and exchange completely. They tended to understand that there were benefits from it. Items not available in one location could be conveyed there by merchants. These might even be essentials for various worthy purposes. Few could argue with the movement of food or iron, and merchants could hardly be expected to accomplish this without compensation. However, the movement and acquisition of foreign goods was regarded as a mixed blessing. First of all, it brought foreigners, whom many Greeks regarded as a bad influence. Most importantly, it made possible the acquisition of many things that Greek philosophers thought were "unnecessary" and therefore corrupting. Plato regarded unlimited desire as the root of all evil. The development of desires and needs unrelated to worthy purposes was for him the worst possible thing that could happen to an individual or a city. Trade and its temptations therefore would be the most dangerous source of "unnecessary desires," posing a grave and seductive threat to virtue and polity.

While Plato's caution is heavy with the paternalism of his political philosophy, moral distaste for "unnecessary desires" persists in recent times, visited upon commercial culture in general and on advertising in particular. Complaints about "consumerism" usually mean accusations that people buy a lot of things that they don't need, and advertising is frequently blamed (by John Kenneth Galbraith, for instance) for engendering (and engineering) desires that people would not have had otherwise. Since "Who cares?" might be the natural reaction to such complaints, behind them are usually other layers of objections, that unnecessary desires are not benign and trivial because (1) they stress the environment, causing an "unsustainable" use of resources and generating excessive pollution, (2) they mean resources are used by rich countries for luxuries and so are denied to poor countries for necessities, perpetuating poverty and starvation, and (3) they mystify and distract consumers from more worthy purposes, like fighting racism, sexism, classism, etc.

Behind these objections are an equal number of misconceptions.

The availability of resources can be determined by their cost. More than twenty years ago statistician Julian Simon offered a bet to environmental doomsayer Paul Ehrlich that a basket of commodities, of Ehrlich's choice, would cost less after ten years. Ehrlich took the bet. And lost it. Meanwhile the mass starvation that Ehrlich had predicted for the 80's didn't happen. Resources tend to be discovered as they are needed, and over time technology makes their recovery more economical. Oil prices spike occasionally because OPEC tries to enforce a monopoly, or because people in modern America don't want oil refineries in their backyards, limiting supply of refined products, or because, as in California, specialized mixes of fuel are required at different times of the year for pollution control, mixes that are made only in California refineries (which no one wants in their backyards). Natural resources are thus rather less limited, to say the least, than the doomsters suppose (though in 2004 we have a brand new prediction that oil will run out in ten years). One suspects that they want resources to be limited enough to lend force to their objections (whose real source is moral) to consumption. As for pollution, wealthier is not only healthier (people live longer) but cleaner. Publicity, torts, and laws target pollution in capitalist countries, while the worst pollution ever was in Communist ones, with the Soviet Union actually dumping nuclear waste into rivers and lakes, and the landscape, with everything in it, turned black from coal burning in Romania. These appalling practices and developments were unknown to the West at the time and have now been conveniently forgotten, with the bien pensants only remembering the myth that planned economies, free of greed, would never countenance pollution.

Since the United States exports food, it is not clear how the manufacture of cell-phones or DVD players denies food to African countries. Objections of this sort tend to derive from a crude Cargo Cult sort of economics [note], in which wealth is a fixed quantity, to be "distributed" fairly among equal claimants in the human community. Wealth, however, is created, not found; and it is created by human enterprise and exchange. Consumer products thus add, not substract, from human wealth, as even Karl Marx would have understood; and if the poor in Haiti or Chad could mass produce some appealing commodity, then they would enter modern life. Gandhi expressed the common misconception in this respect by saying that we should "live simply so that others can simply live" (a line I've seen quoted by the actor and environmental activist Ed Begley Jr. in an appearance at my own institution, Valley College). However, living simply can easily affect others, in a Chinese saying, by denying them "their rice bowl," i.e. taking away their means of subsistence. While we want others to have food and other necessities, their only hope of independence and self-reliance is not to be given such things but to create something that others want, enabling them to exchange their goods for both necessities and luxuries. The truth, however, is that many of those who believe that somehow the West (and Japan) has impoverished poor countries nevertheless don't want such countries to enjoy a commercial economy. This would merely visit a vulgar "consumerism" on them. Better that they remain poor and virtuous, like Cuba or North Korea. So the objection boils down to, not any real impoverishment of Third World countries, but, again, moral objections to "unnecessary desires."

The idea that there are better things consumers could be doing if they were not distracted by consumer products is simply paternalism and political moralism at its worst. If people are not constantly and grimly fighting for some politicial cause, then they must suffer from "false consciousness," mystified by their capitalist oppressors. The conception, indeed, is of a totalitarian society, where all have the same purposes and work cooperatively, jointly, and collectively to achieve them. The "mass" culture of consumerism can then return to the authentic folk culture that activists hate to see vanish in Third World countries -- vanishing, of course, because the people of Third World countries often prefer T-shirts, radios, and other consumer products over the meager contents of their traditional cultures (unless they can turn traditional products into consumer items -- unfortunately this usually means merely craft artwork that is sold to an elite, not a mass, market). But, of course, whatever they actually prefer is something that can be suppressed by the righteous and virtuous political action of the activists. Amazonian Indians should be proud of a mesolithic existence.

At the bottom of the Greek and other ancient objections to trade was the idea that traders don't really add any value to the items they deal in. They take from the maker and convey to the buyer, but they have not made anything themselves. This makes them parasites. Although philosophers like Plato did recognize that moving the goods itself adds value to them, it was very hard to shake the overall impression that traders didn't do anything essential or necessary.

Curiously, Islâm, from whose moralism we might expect similar attitudes about trade, instead has only positive things to say. Thus, the Qur'ân asserts, "It is no sin for you to seek the bounty of our Lord [by trading]" [2:198]. The annual pilgrimage to Mecca always doubled as a trade fair, with people bringing goods from all over the Islamic world, in part to finance the pilgrimage itself, which could be ruinously expensive. We can imagine that this benign attitude towards business was a function, perhaps in great measure, of the Prophet Muh.ammad himself having engaged in trade.

If the feeling among moralists was that traders didn't do anything essential or necessary with trade, how much more so with moneylending (where Islâm did find a problem). As Aristotle says, charging interest ("usury," obolostatiké, "obol weighing"), is "reasonably hated." If traders are parasites on goods, the moneylenders are parasites on money, which itself is parasitic on trade -- since "money was brought into existence for the purpose of exchange." If exchange itself is contrary to nature, moneylending is "of all forms the most contrary to nature." There were few to disagree with this during the Middle Ages. Islâmic Law prohibited (and prohibits) charging interest, the Catholic Church and most Christian states prohibited the charging of interest by Christians, and even Judaism prohibited Jews from charging interest against other Jews. Since Jews then could loan money with interest to Christians and Muslims, they acquired a reputation as the moneylenders in Europe and the Middle East. This haunted Jews long after most Christians had given up the idea that there was anything wrong with lending money and charging interest -- except, of course, among those, not always Christians, who continued to think that either interest or money or both were wrongful or unnecessary.

Finance is still widely misunderstood and disliked, even by people who otherwise have no complaint about capitalism. A good example of that was Henry Ford, who revolutionized mass production and created an automobile that could be sold to a mass market ($300 for a Model T Ford in 1920 -- perhaps only $3000 in 1999 dollars). Ford didn't like bankers and finance, and thought of all of them as largely devices of an international Jewish conspiracy. One fan of Ford's writings about this was no less than Adolf Hitler. (Ford went quiet with his charges before that mortifying tribute, either because he thought better of it or just to avoid lawsuits.) Without any moral objections to exchange, Ford retained the ancient condemnation of moneylending and associated it with its Mediaeval exemplars. For the man who said "History is bunk," this is a good example of how much trouble one can get into by combining confused history with confused economics and morality.

As a recommendation of prudence, Benjamin Franklin said, "Never a borrower nor a lender be." However, not much very serious would ever get done economically without borrowing and lending. Even if one accumulates capital slowly until a large investment can be made without borrowing, success then means a larger accumulation of capital which will need to be disposed of in some way. People imagine that they would just put it in the bank. The bank, however, then has to worry what to do with it, especially if people expect to be paid interest on their money! So they loan it. Either way, the problem is what to do with money if one is not simply going to buy commodities for one's own use (or give it away, a favorite alternative for the very rich). It is to be invested, with the purpose of acquiring income. This can be done by buying land or buying a business, which directly provides one with rents or profits, but also requires some considerable supervision, if not substantial business skills to use property or run a business. Most people who already have money would like something simpler -- and buying one business after another with profits would result in a commercial conglomerate that one person could not supervise.

Making loans means becoming a banker, which also requires considerable business skills. Buying stocks and bonds also requires knowledge and supervision, but much less than with the other things. This means that investment need not be a full time job, which is just the idea for someone who has aleady made their money. The market for stocks and bonds, however, is a level of finance that is already a further step removed from simple loans/moneylending. We can imagine Aristotle becoming even more indignant about such things. Indeed, we find Thomas Jefferson frequently complaining about "stock jobbers" (i.e. stock brokers), and fury over "speculators" became the principal public and political response to the Great Depression. Franklin Roosevelt, like most subsequent "liberal" opinion, clearly blamed financial markets for the stock market Crash of 1929 and the subsequent Depression. Neither understood or trusted what such people were doing.

We see something similar in the movie Pretty Woman [1990], where Richard Gere plays a businessman who buys up companies and then breaks them up and sells off the parts for a profit. This kind of economic activity is called "arbitrage." This is presented in the movie, as such things are in the press generally, as a useless, evil thing, that destroys jobs and wrecks business -- the "greed" of the 80's. In the movie, Julia Roberts even compares it to stealing cars and selling the parts. In fact, it is a useful thing, which easily creates jobs and increases production. A company can be broken up and sold for a profit only if it is worth less than what the sum of what its parts are worth individually. But if a company is worth less than the sum of its parts, then breaking up the company frees capital that can be used for other investment purposes, including creating jobs in other companies or industries. Otherwise the capital is locked up and useless. Julia Roberts' analogy to stealing a car and selling the parts is false since nothing is being stolen when you buy a company: If you buy a car and sell the parts for a profit, that would be a good, and honest, business, and is often done. Richard Gere's character also wanted (initially) to demolish a shipyard and sell the land for others purposes. If such a move would be profitable, then clearly the land was worth more for the other purposes than for the shipyard, capital was again being uselessly tied up, and the shipyard would be economically more valuable located somewhere else. The movie Pretty Woman thus presents an ideological view that is hostile to capital and ignorant of its purpose -- all too common in Hollywood movies.

Here, Julia Robert's comparison to car theft recalls Aristotle's failure to distinguish between exchange and theft. While most people in the West and Far East now take loans and interest for granted, more sophisticated financial instruments and activities, like commodity futures or arbitrage, may still be viewed with suspicion and disapproval. This suspicion had grave financial consequences when financier Michael Milkin, the "king of junk bonds," was prosecuted for technical trading violations but was widely regarded as guilty of fraud for trading in junk bonds at all. However, there was nothing wrong with junk bonds, except that they were, and are, riskier than rated bonds. Because of the widespread idea that junk bonds were themselves fraudulent and worthless, Congress required that Savings and Loan institutions sell off their junk bond investments. Such forced sales, of course, drove down prices and meant that most Savings and Loans took nothing but losses, often serious losses, on their investments. Savings and Loans were already in financial trouble because the inflation of the 1970's had rendered their traditonal low interest loans worthless. The result was the collapse of the entire Savings and Loan industry, requiring billions of dollars from the government in payoffs for the federally insured (up to $100,000) accounts at the Savings and Loans. In evident public and political discourse, the blame for this has never properly been laid at the feet of the government. Just more "greed" of the 80's.

Like many people who don't know what to do with capital, and who don't know what is done with capital, Marx simply supposed that there was nothing to do with capital except what was aleady being done. Thus, if the English built railroads, the only way new capital could be invested would be to build railroads elsewhere. That, indeed, is what the English often did; but, once enough railroads were built everywhere, then, presumably, the English wouldn't know what else to do. Financial panic and the fall of capitalism would result. This is a simplied but not unfair summary of Marxism. What Marx and recent critics of capitalism haven't comprehended is that imagination is the source of new investment and new wealth. The British stumbled as the "workshop of the world" just because British investors had difficulty moving in their minds beyond steam and rail. Henry Ford was American, and, as we can imagine seeing in the reverse of the 1914 Federal Reserve $20 Note, the car and airplane are preparing to surge past the steam locomotive. Diesel engines eventually would replace steam in trains and ships also. From imagination come the new products that tend to distinguish the decades, like radio in the 1920's, VCR's in the 1980's, or personal computers in the 1990's, and also new ways of producing products, so that less labor is necessary for greater production. Imagination, also, tends to be found in the more eager, yearning, and (sometimes literally) hungry, which is why about half of all new American millionaires are foreign born. Natives always tend to become comfortable and complacent and expect that their earnings and welfare are by right and custom. Eager immigrants, like Jews, Chinese, Koreans, (East) Indians, etc., are pushy and offensive, throwing their betters (i.e. natives) out of work. A society open to immigrants, and into which they can blend with relative ease, thus perpetually renews itself -- as the United States has done for most of its history.

Just what imagination can do for innovation and productivity is something that can only really be understood by those who do it, and the successful entrepreneur or venture capitalist needs to have some clue. The critic who thinks that capitalists will run out of uses for capital doesn't. But if, to the likes of Marx, capital is a superfluous interposition between labor and consumption, what is it actually? It is, after, the value of objects, particularly the value of productive assets (capital assets), in the estimation of individuals who value them. Marx is often said to have a "labor theory of value," something that seems to go back to John Locke. Most people easily understand that labor, however, does not necessarily bestow any value on objects. Crackpots can devote years of effort to projects that are completely worthless to others. Even Marx, however, understood this, and his formula is actually that value derives from "socially necessary labor." "Socially necessary" can easily eliminate the value of the crackpot creations and discount the contribution of wasteful overwork. It also echoes Plato's "unnecessary desires" rhetoric: it is not really labor that makes for value, but what is "socially necessary." How what is "socially necessary" is then determined is the problem. What people buy as a matter of fact in the market cannot be allowed, since they can be deceived by marketing or by their own inappropriate desires. What is to be allowed might be voted on, which sounds like the right approach in a thoroughly political society, but this could only be allowed when a majority can be counted on to have the right political consciousness. "False consciousness" can only be avoided if we only allow the wise and the good to decide what is "socially necessary." This is what political elites always want, and it simply turns Marxism to the truly Mediaeval political moralism and paternalism -- the obvious preference of leftist activists.

From Aristotle to Marx to their living brethren, what we see are people who don't like most of what other people want and who particularly don't like the people who produce and provide it for them -- the traders, the moneylenders (bankers/financiers/brokers), and the capitalists (entrepreneurs/industrialists). In a Cargo Cult economics, goods just appear, or are easily created by the simple and pure (i.e. simple farmers or proletarian workers), and properly rain down on all without insidious and unfair distinctions between the productive and the non-productive. Of course, what we see when attempts have been made to impose these ideas in real societies is that political elites, and wise and the good who make the disinterested judgments for the good of others, cannot be expected to live like, well, hoi polloi, since this would be beneath the dignity of government, might expose them to violence from reactionaries, or would waste their time as the people's business calls. So they really need special privileges and elevated, isolated living arrangements. Unfortunately, although these pretentions are most justly to be discredited, blamed, censured, and hated, we still see the likes of Oliver Stone and even Steven Spielberg fawning over Fidel Castro, and in 2003 the occasional anti-war activist even had kind things to say about Saddam Hussein (after all, the status of women was better in Iraq than in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia -- at least the women who had not been beaten, raped, or murdered). The danger of these people is now as great as it has ever been, even as the rhetoric against capital, finance, and corporations (not to mention Jews) is as heated as it has been since the Fall of Communism.

Nevertheless, the disadvantages of anti-commercial ideology are heavy. When those who hated capital and consumption (and Jews) in the 20th century murdered some hundred million people, and the poster children for the struggle against international capitalism and America are now fanatical Islamic terrorists, this puts recent enthusiasts in an awkward position. Most of them are too dense and shameless to appreciate it, and far too many Americans are taken in by moralistic and paternalistic rhetoric, but it is, at least, easily exposed, by those with the wit and profile to enunciate the issues publicly. Unfortunately, there are actually damn few of them. So the struggle continues.

There may not be too many readers who have had the chance I had (in 1969-1970) to buy things in traditional Arab markets in Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria. One of my experiences was in a shop in Aleppo, when I had to give a fairly large note to the shopkeeper for a purchase that had been negotiated in Arabic. He called a young boy to the front to take the note back to the shop safe for change. I noticed from his instructions (in Arabic) that he asked for less money in change than was owing to me. He may not have thought that my command of the language was good enough to understand him. My Arabic, indeed, wasn't all that good, but it was good enough to know what he said. When the boy brought the money up, and it was passed on to me, I said that this was not the correct amount, and that I should get back more change. The shopkeeper looked at me for a moment and then called to the boy to bring the extra money. One might think that such a man would be embarrassed to be found out in trying to short-change a customer. Instead, he looked me in the eye and shook my hand. By not being cheated, I had gained respect.

So what is one to think of this kind of thing? In a culture of bargaining, one is respected for being a good bargainer. P.T. Barnum said it all, "Never give a sucker an even break." Is this just a "stereotype"? No, it is a cultural practice, a very ancient one. But it also means that a naive person is just asking to be taken, though more people may take advantage of that than others. Attributing these practices and attitudes to Arabs, or, has traditionally been done, to Jews (as we even see in Kant), may seem hostile to those who don't know what traditional Middle Eastern society is like, but it can hardly be so when one is aware that, in fact, such a society is morally superior to the kind, now all too familiar, where all prices are fixed by the State and farmers and businesses (or Detroit) are bankrupted, crippling society, because they cannot turn a profit, or even break even. The moral perversity, viciousness, and stupidity of the latter is rarely exposed in Hollywood movies or television, while the "greedy" businessman, as previously the "greedy" Jew, turns up as the villain in a wildly disproportional number of stories.

The naive person wandering into a Middle Eastern market, and discovering that all the prices may be fluid and negotiable, may be alarmed and disconcerted. After buying something, and discovering that someone else has actually gotten it for less, may very well provoke a sense that one has been cheated and taken. This is certainly what St. Augustine had in mind when he thought that business was intrinsically morally corrupt. On the other hand, people who make regular purchases in a market know what the prices tend to be, and the custom of bargaining applies "market" pressure to the prices and serves to keep them, indeed, honest -- or to accurately reflect supply and demand. In being taken, the naive person is being initiated, or hazed, and taught a valuable lesson. Perhaps Augustine did not need to make his own daily purchases. As the Bishop of Hippo he probably had servants who spent the actual money.

Also, the advantage may be reversed. A friend of mine was offered a rug in the market in Aleppo for 300 Syrian pounds, or more (it was a long time ago). She had no desire for a rug, and no intention of buying one. The price began falling. We left the shop. We were pursued down the street. Eventually the price came down to £50, which at the time was only $12.50. So she bought it. I think it was worth a lot more than that. I had the honor of carrying it back to Beirut, where it was shipped home -- probably at greater expense than its purchase price.

A noteworthy thing about Islâm is that, although charging interest is absolutely forbidden by Islamic Law, there isn't a hint of condemnation or disapproval of trade or business in general. Indeed, the Prophet Muh.ammad himself was a merchant, and he never suffered the slightest pang or reproach that he was engaged in anything unethical or reprehensible. That being the case, and the practices of merchants in the market being quite open and respectable, one does wonder at the modern economic backwardness of the Middle East. One problem was the failure of Islamic Law to provide for durable corporate entities. Partnerships were allowed, but the death of a partner meant that the assets needed to be dispersed among the heirs. They couldn't just be given stock in the company. In the absence of a robust banking industry, which is not likely to be possible given the prohibition of interest, and the absence of a stock market, since there are no joint-stock companies, the effect of all this would have been to prevent the accumulation of capital. Since the Left doesn't understand capital, they are not going to worry about that; but the inability to concentrate capital means that economic investment and development will be stifled, which is just what we see.

English Department Marxists see political economy as a morality tale. Capitalists are wicked. This is not Marxism. The form of economic activity in Marx is determined by the material conditions of production, regardless of the will, intentions, or goodness of the economic participants. Only when those conditions change can the mode of production change. What Marx overlooked was that those material conditions of production must be ranked according to a system of value, and that value is capital, including human capital. Marx's denial of the existence and necessity of capital means that his own theory does not contain a variable to explain improved modes of production and increased productivity. Hegelian dialectic alone is not sufficient.

Enklinobarangus ()

The original Cargo Cult developed in New Guinea after World War II. During the war, the Melanesian locals, who lived at a mesolithic or neolithic level of culture, saw airplanes arrive and disgorge vast quantities of "cargo." They did not understand that these things had to be manufactured and that the airplanes themselves were artifacts. They believed that the planes and the cargo were gifts from the gods, brought down to earth by ritual invocations. There were incidents where the crew members of aircraft were murdered because the locals thought they were no more than supernumeraries to the divine operation. When the modern armies left and the cargo stopped arriving, the "Cargo Cult" was a religious attempt to reproduce the invocations and effect the continued blessing of the gods. Not surprisingly, it didn't work.

People who like (some of) the products of a modern economy but don't like the entrepreneuers, industrialists, and financiers who make it all possible end up with something rather like the beliefs of the Cargo Cultists -- usually with the fundamental principle that "natural resources" are themselves wealth (for which Third World countries are never paid enough, except, I suppose, Saudi Arabia) and that any function beyond the bare labor necessary to produce or distribute goods is superfluous. Thus, we see former Vice President Al Gore saying that one of the problems of the international order is "the ongoing redistribution of wealth globally from the poor to the wealthy" [An Inconvenient Truth, The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do about It, Al Gore & Melcher Media, Rodale Press, 2006, p.13]. So what is the "wealth" that is being moved from poor countries to wealthy ones? They are certainly not being looted of ipods or refrigerators. So there must be piles of goods there, "resources," that already count as wealth and that somehow are being improperly moved. Perhaps if the resources stayed where they are, they would miraculously transform into ipods and refrigerators. But if the complaint is that the poor countries are not being paid enough for their resources, we still have the problem that many countries that are wealthy from oil still don't produce anything else. The total non-petroleum exports of the entire Arab world are less than those of Finland. What the Saudis do with their money does not seem to involve any investment in native industries that make any contribution to the international economy. And they spend money on religious education and propaganda in their own radical Wahhabî sect that has helped promote terrorism. Or, Al Gore may be thinking that foreign business exploits third world countries by hiring people at low wages to make products that are sold elsewhere. Perhaps this is what "redistributes" wealth in the way he describes. However, if the third world workers otherwise wouldn't have jobs, and if they are well paid by local standards, then the net effect is an improvement in their lot, and their wealth increases. So it is hard not to see Al Gore's view as involving a Cargo Cult understanding of "found" wealth.

Listening to common political discourse, everyone should understand what it means when someone speaks of the "working class," i.e. that anyone else, managers or professionals, don't really work. They are parasites. This is only slightly more sophisticated than the original Cargo Cult, with faith invested, not in the gods, but in the technological acumen of the ordinary blue collar worker. The ordinary worker, however, who rises above this merely mythic attribute to do something genuinely creative will become a hated entrepreneur -- the way that successful farmers under Stalin were instantly branded as Kulak class enemies and eliminated. It is only to Marxism that capitalists do not belong to the "working class." In the British aristocratic tradition, a "gentleman" is only the person without any regular trade or profession.